Heartland - by Jilanne Hoffmann (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

Out of the Dust meets Me and Marvin Gardens in this coming-of-age novel about a young misfit searching for the truth of her family's past, set against the backdrop of an environmental cover-up.

Twelve-year-old Xyla is sick of two things: working on her family's sixth-generation Iowa farm and her mother's nagging words, "Pay attention!" But Xyla can't help getting lost in the thoughts that fill her head, sometimes leaving a wake of costly mistakes. If only her mother would tell her something, anything, about her father, who left when she was little. When Xyla finds her mother's hidden childhood diary, she's soon sucked into the story of a hardscrabble life on the family farm in the 1980s. Can she find the key to her past and her father in the pages?

Xyla's life grows even more complicated as a new family begins renting a vacant house on the farm, and the daughter Alegría is focused and motivated--the kind of kid Xyla is sure her mother prefers. But when the girls stumble upon an environmental disaster right next door, Xyla must trust her new friend and her complicated mother to figure out how to stop it. Alternating timelines in prose and verse connect the quiet desperation of Iowa farmers in the late 1980s to the modern farming landscape in this layered and voice-driven middle grade debut.

About the Author

Jilanne Hoffmann is the author of the picture books The River of Dust: Africa to the Amazon and The Ocean's Heart. She has a degree in engineering, an MFA in writing, and co-directs San Francisco's Kidquake. She is an active member of SCBWI, the Writing Barn Courage to Create, and 12x12, along with her science/engineering communities. She lives in San Francisco with her family.